Regarding Restorationism

[Cachard Calia]

If you find this thread offensive, please just leave instead of making a big stink. There have already been too many people smacked.
Onto the actual discussion.
So NSG, I've been thinking lately about churches such as the Quivers, the Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Mormons. I personally find them to be almost cultlike in instances, and harmful for the individual and the society. This is due to rampant misogyny, homophobia, and racism within these churches, as well as the doctrine that is embedded into members by the churches, namely that the Church is always right, that certain people are just superior, and that if you think outside their doctrine, you are not as good a person as everyone else, and you will go to hell or an equivalent.
So, what do y'all think? Are they the bane of society, are you a member of one, or somewhere in between? Discuss, and preferably do so within the site rules. Can't make you, but I will be disappointed if you don't.

[Galiantus III]

I'm a Mormon. In fairness, I'm probably not the best representative of them, but it is an important part of my life that I don't intend on changing.

[Northern Socialist Council Republics]

Religions of all stripes are a stain on human civilisation and secular states should be taking every possible measure to wash it clean.

We can begin, I think, by revoking their tax-exempt status, ability to run their own educational institutions, and freedom to induct underaged persons as members.

[Cachard Calia]

I'm a Mormon. In fairness, I'm probably not the best representative of them, but it is an important part of my life that I don't intend on changing.

And I don't think you should if you don't want to. I just think people shouldn't be born into it, and that the churches themselves cause great harm.

[The Empire Of The Sutherlands]

Wait it's not LSD Church?

[Cachard Calia]

Wait it's not LSD Church?

xD LSD church
anyways no its LDS, short for Latter-Day Saints

[The Empire Of The Sutherlands]

Wait it's not LSD Church?

xD LSD church
anyways no its LDS, short for Latter-Day Saints

Alright thanks for the clarification.

[A m e n r i a]

I assume there are enough Mormons in your country for you to complain about them. Well, are they doing illegal things? Were those independent actions or sanctioned by the church?

[Cachard Calia]

I assume there are enough Mormons in your country for you to complain about them. Well, are they doing illegal things? Were those independent actions or sanctioned by the church?

I live in Utah. So yes, yes, and it's complicated.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Very questionable choice for a title lol

[El Lazaro]

I assume there are enough Mormons in your country for you to complain about them. Well, are they doing illegal things? Were those independent actions or sanctioned by the church?

Mormons used to be illegal in part of the US, and for good reasons too.

[Cachard Calia]

Very questionable choice for a title lol

wdym?

I assume there are enough Mormons in your country for you to complain about them. Well, are they doing illegal things? Were those independent actions or sanctioned by the church?

Mormons used to be illegal in part of the US, and for good reasons too.

EXTREMELY good reason

[Cannot think of a name]

It's hard for me to listen to someone from a religion to point to another one and go, "Aren't they crazy!?" Yeah, well...your shit sounds bonkers to me, too. It's all in the same Skittles bag if you ask me. There was a one panel cartoon I wish I knew how to find that had someone standing on a box on a street corner with one of those donation thermometers with the preacher asking people to make him legit, with the chart showing the number members moving them from cult to religion.

Yeah, Mormons do some weird shit. But Catholics practice ritualized cannibalism via transubstantiation. Holy fuck I spelled that right on the first try. From the outside that looks crazy as hell. And then you add the amount of power that the Catholic church has and the affect they've had on poor communities across the globe, covering abuse etc. Putting the whole together Mormons being weird seems small potatoes.

I mean, believe what you believe if it gives you comfort. Keep your arms inside the cart however, it's your belief not mine and you don't get to shape the world based on that.

[Stellar Colonies]

Their door-to-door knockers are annoying, but I make a point of being polite so that the kids and young adults doing it don't think everyone outside of their club is hostile.

[Technoscience Leftwing]

We did not have Mormons in the USSR and Russia, I only learned about them from a book about Sherlock Holmes. There, one guy became a victim of the Mormons, who forced his girlfriend to go into the harem of one of the leaders of the sect, and the guy then took revenge on them for this by killing two Mormons in London. Then one of the episodes of the Soviet television series about Holmes was filmed based on this book, and there the whole background with the Mormons in Utah was not shown, it was only briefly mentioned by the caught killer during interrogation. Other sects were allowed during the Yeltsin period, later they were banned, but this was not due to secularism, but rather to the struggle of the Russian Orthodox Church for a monopoly on the religious market. Well, I adhere to an anti-clerical position towards all religious organizations, as in the early USSR.

[Galiantus III]

I assume there are enough Mormons in your country for you to complain about them. Well, are they doing illegal things? Were those independent actions or sanctioned by the church?

Mormons used to be illegal in part of the US, and for good reasons too.

*sigh*

Okay, let me explain: Polygamy and Slavery. The North didn't like that the church practiced polygamy, and the South didn't like that the church (composed of mostly northerners and British immigrants) were politically abolitionist. Naturally it's way more complicated than that, but things came to a head in Missouri (a slave state) largely because of a fear the church could wield significant political power in the state. Things spiraled out of control, leading to a bloody war, and ultimately an executive order from Governor Boggs that the church was to be “exterminated or driven from the State if necessary”. This order stood as part of Missouri law from 1838 to 1976.

[El Lazaro]

Mormons used to be illegal in part of the US, and for good reasons too.

*sigh*

Okay, let me explain: Polygamy and Slavery. The North didn't like that the church practiced polygamy, and the South didn't like that the church (composed of mostly northerners and British immigrants) were politically abolitionist. Naturally it's way more complicated than that, but things came to a head in Missouri (a slave state) largely because of a fear the church could wield significant political power in the state. Things spiraled out of control, leading to a bloody war, and ultimately an executive order from Governor Boggs that the church was to be “exterminated or driven from the State if necessary”. This order stood as part of Missouri law from 1838 to 1976.

Lmao, cope. That’s not the reason Joseph Smith worshippers were illegal, and you know it. Hint: it’s more along the lines of why Aum Shinrikyo was cracked down on.

[Holy Catheria]

Mormonism is so ridiculous that even Americans have a hard time buying it. To recruit new members, the LDS church sends its peppiest and preppiest to places like Rwanda and the Cameroon instead. They get an easier reception from the credulous, uneducated and destitute.

As a tribe, Mormons are so relentlessly well-mannered and unobjectionable that it feels churlish to sit them down and beg them not to do missionary work. But if you’re a Christian, that is your obligation, because Utah’s never-ending stream of plastic propagandists has grown into a huge and complex operation, endangering tens of thousands of impressionable souls every year.

Mormonism and Nigerian 419 scams share a common feature, poorly understood in each case. Their casuistry is easy to spot—and purposefully so. It’s a filter designed to weed out educated, skeptical, intelligent people who might be a handful later. Anyone who is still game despite an incoherent, poorly-spelled email about wire transfers from foreign royalty, or anxious to hear more preposterous claims about Jesus’s international travel, will believe just about anything. Those are the ones they want.

The history of these Christianity-flavored cults suggests that the LDS fall will be precipitous, and that the church will stagger on with a few thousand members as a kind of joke, like Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christian Science. It only reached the present 16 million members or so thanks to favorable prevailing conditions—the decline of morals and wholesome lifestyles in the west—but we are now at a point of crisis where only purpose-built tools will do. The Devil fears Latin, and Mormons don’t speak it.

Joseph Smith excommunicated friends who wouldn’t let him steal their wives. (He died with nearly 40.) He was also, before appointing himself prophet, a grave-robber. To most people this biography would be self-disqualifying. But it functions as a filter that greatly helps the LDS church in identifying recruits who will believe and do anything they are told, and who will overlook any embarrassing detail in exchange for a whiff of acceptance, affirmation, or friendship.

Mormons who know this stuff and believe anyway aren’t necessarily “stupid” in the intellectual sense. But they are credulous, easily influenced and have given themselves up into a sort of moral capitulation. They are willingly blind, habituated to look the other way. So, although they can be trusted to figure out a math equation, or look up the date of something, you can never take their word for it without double-checking. On the other hand, they can never be relied upon for anything that involves context, inferential reasoning, ranking or judgment. You mustn’t, for instance, ask them to recommend a business strategy, or tell you what the best chicken sandwich in America is. Their feelings and their faith are at war with the critical faculties necessary for such tasks.

Mormonism is a shoddy, implausible, blasphemous pastiche of Christian truth that dissolves under scrutiny into laughable and/or offensive nonsense—nothing more so than Joseph Smith’s untimely death. While Our Lord was crucified to redeem us, Joseph Smith met his end in a shoot-out after a jailbreak.

If a Mormon ever comes to your door and asks you to talk about Jesus Christ, the correct response is to say “Of course, what would you like to know?”

[Cannot think of a name]

Their door-to-door knockers are annoying, but I make a point of being polite so that the kids and young adults doing it don't think everyone outside of their club is hostile.

Yeah...I wish the budding young atheist me had realized he was the asshole in this situation a lot, lot earlier. He was so happy with himself, too...to be the nth smug little shit to present the same generic and trite arguments over a matter of faith, like I'm gonna 'talk them out of it'...

Live and hopefully learn.

[Emotional Support Crocodile]

L Ron Hubbard learned a lot from Joseph Smith on how to gull people.

[Floofybit]

The heck is a Mormon?

[Dogmeat]

Nothing more then the legacy of a successful scam.

[The Archregimancy]

I've long been slightly fascinated by the Community of Christ.

It's not often appreciated by those of us outside the LDS movement just how fractured and subject to internal denominational dispute the movement has become since Joseph Smith left for Kolob.

While none of these denominations match the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in numbers, and some are tiny, the Community of Christ has some 250,000 members, and is by far the second-largest denomination in the movement (though still dwarfed by the main LDS church).

What I find mildly fascinating about the Community of Christ is that they've solved the problem - well, a problem for us archaeologists, anyway - that archaeology has utterly refuted almost every core 'historical' element of the Book of Mormon (and let's not even get started on 'Reformed Egyptian') by openly declaring that 'while the Church affirms the Book of Mormon as scripture ... we do not attempt to mandate the degree of belief or use. This position is in keeping with our longstanding tradition that belief in the Book of Mormon is not to be used as a test of fellowship or membership in the church'. This is in direct reaction to 'long-standing questions about its historicity and in part because of perceived theological inadequacies, including matters of race and ethnicity'.

[Hispida]

i think JWs are far more harmful than mormons. most mormons just kinda... exist. i've only met maybe, what, 1 or 2 who were zealots?

[El Lazaro]

i think JWs are far more harmful than mormons. most mormons just kinda... exist. i've only met maybe, what, 1 or 2 who were zealots?

Nah. While JWs are even more cult-y and unable to function in society, beyond door knocking, they basically don’t do anything to hurt people outside their cult communities and are more often the victims of persecution than perpetrators. Since JWs believe participating in politics is sinful, they rarely vote and have historically mostly faced backlash for their refusal to serve in wars or swear loyalty to governments they live under, albeit for a dumber reason than conscientious objectors and dissidents. They’re also not extremely racist, but rather diverse. Compare that to Mormons, who terrorized basically everyone and established theocratic communities and hellholes like Utah.